Adirondack Poems

My bathing suit under a sundress
I race to the end of the dock
Where my adirondack chair calls to me
An oversized mug of iced coffee in hand
Light summer novel in the other
The lake placid awaits a cottage sunrise
A canoe gliding by...Read More

Underneath the looming hemlocks,
the incline makes each step a strain,
up sandy earth and broken stone,
but I see sunlight up ahead.

Emerge upon a high ridgeline,
underfoot now is all bedrock,
scraggle pines peak through its big cracks,
throw shadows, the squirrels chitter…

The hot gaze...Read More

God was so pleased with his six days of creation
The seventh day He declared a day of rest
Bound to have some heavenly
Well-deserved rest and recreation

As soon as He woke up
He brewed a cup of java and 
Set up his most...Read More

adirondack chairs
two overlooking
late summer sunset



posted on September 11, 2018...Read More

I lie back in our Adirondack chair,
And feel the soft breeze over sunset waves,
Drowsiness claims my senses. and
I imagine that ship in the distance I see
Shining in the last bit of day
Is my captain coming home to me.
In my heart...Read More

How unparticular the day had particularly been,
On March the third of two-thousand and eighteen,
For the caretaker at an historic Adirondack Inn,
Had lacked company, and therefore, dopamine.

‘Twas Sunday when all the guests had fled,
From either boredom or towards it in vocation,
For...Read More

In the green Adirondack foothills lies
the haven of our old summer camp,
once a place of adventure and outdoor joy,
and the loud cries of precocious scamps,
their energy you never could tamp,
scurrying ’round on small, rapid feet,
leaping into the pond without a...Read More

It’s a dreamy misty Sunday morning
With the sun ever so lazily rising
Zen the heron fishing yond
Stands tall and patient in the pond
This is cottage living at its best
Sitting on the deck feeling blessed
Breathing in the woodsy air
From my favourite Adirondack...Read More

I was out walking on a trek
through forested Adirondack hills,
looking for a good place to camp,
to drop my pack and just chill.

It was a weekend excursion,
and I’d already done eight miles,
seeking out the kind of peace
a man only finds in...Read More

At the foot of the massive massif bluffs which bounce atop upstate New York,
The air is thick with suburban smog bottled beneath the mountains' unpopped cork.

The fumes from factories of the foothill folk have feigned a fluorescent flora:
Sickly neon trees...Read More

Alone, surrounded by seventeen million humans who call New York home
In a rut, depressed, searching in pain and in vain for hope

A crisp fall day, I venture north to play
The Adirondack valley, mountains borne from bursting glacial fountains
I drive alone...Read More

Hudson Valley, New York


Oh, Hudson Valley, place that I call home,
you hug the river from which came your name.
On fertile banks, the settlers came to roam
and stayed to prosper and your land proclaim.

Your winding Hudson River grew their dreams
with farmlands,...Read More

Soft leaves underfoot, mosaics of nature
Sleeping in shadows of yawning maples
Beneath these stretching branches I roam
Foot steps in rhythm with a woodpecker’s cadence
Humming to the harmony of dawn’s cool breeze

Sunlight weaves past distant mountain peaks
Warming my face, enhancing my vision
Miles...Read More

  My lovely wifes birthday was soon to come,
I wanted to do something special for her, 
that I have never done.

  I was always taught by my Grandma to cook
since I was six, and my mother Anais, also
shared...Read More

Absolute science and art of being whole
           at one and under no delusion that
                ...Read More

Out of the corner of my eye
I see a tree
The beauty of it seems to speak to me
I wind down the dry dirt road
And find myself eye to eye
    With an Orange Grove!
The beauties are bulging.
 ...Read More

Away from the world
from the hustle and bustle
making friends with the residents
tucked in
among the cattails and bank of elephant ears
sitting in the dainty, mahogany lean-to
It seems it is just the screen that prevents me from sharing their world
a world where...Read More

A polite rain
joined me briefly
before heading uptrail
to leave me standing, alone,
in a suddenly steaming forest.


I wrote this on a hike in the Adriondacks to  to Mt Marcy, the highest mountain in New York State. My Adirondack  Guide indicated...Read More

There is a house on Nashatuck hill in Concord
with beautiful open spaces
It was built in the 1930s
and it has an Adirondack style porch that looks out over 
a small valley and Concord center
The house has three stories
and on every story...Read More

Butterflies flit to flowers
serenity in the shade
reclined adirondack chair
a buzzzz interrupts...

Ouch, bee sting "bites me", in pain, 
I run for the cortisone.
Impossible! metered buzzzz
...off to find Cyndi!

By Rhonda Johnson-Saunders
for Linda-Marie's Bite Me contest
April 9, 2012

*Tag, Cyndi's it! I wasn't going...Read More

a young boy playing with his friends 
at the top of a snowy hill
(one fashioned from a golf course, which with its deep dives &
cuts made for an exciting & dangerous fight down & around all
of its waves & bends---upon...Read More

Meanwhile, our troop moved on down the trail.
One more bear episode needs be told.
We arrived at the next stop with out fail.
It was late evening and beginning to get cold.

Two of us went to the horse spring for a bath
And...Read More

The Appalachian Trail is quite a long path.
Not many can go the whole way.
For those not content to do the math
It’s five million strides, so they say.

Most hikers elect to go part of the way.
A distance which can be done...Read More

Preface:  Written for my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary

Where the Smoke Goes 

I went to the place where the smoke goes, from all our blown out candles.
I found pounds of Cape Cod beach sand there, broken kites and...Read More